“Mother,” she said in a panic, “I left Ahiram on the beach, I must go back and get him.”
“You’re not going anywhere,” her mother had stated in an unflinching voice that took the young woman by surprise.
“Mother … we must go back! Ahiram is alone, hiding in my boat.”
Her father had been sitting on a tree stump, still as a statue.
“In your boat? El be praised. He has yet a chance to survive. We must wait until the soldiers leave.”
“I cannot leave him alone. Let me go!” Hoda screamed hysterically.
Her mother, who had previously never laid a hand on her, slapped her, and then slapped her again—and it stung. “You cannot go now,” snapped Hayat. “If you do, they will kill you. You must wait until they leave. Do you hear me?”
The roaring fire that consumed Baher-Ghafé muffled her screams of agony. Not waiting, Karadon led them to a flower-filled meadow. In a corner, a brook cascaded along moss-covered rocks into a quiet pond. This setting would have been ideal for the Festival of Light, but to Hoda, the pond had become a pool of blood. They waited there until Karadon’s companions joined them.
With a sigh, Hoda pushed her blanket off and got up. She instantly regretted it. The icy-cold wind swirled around her bare ankles like a spider inspecting its prey. It howled as it lifted a fine dusty sheen and swept it against the tent wall behind her. Ignoring the biting cold, she walked toward the entrance and peered through the protective curtain hanging from the main horizontal beam of the canopy door. A turbulent herd of brooding clouds had turned the sky into a thunderous battlefield. Before long, rain would overtake Gordion and the vast plain surrounding the capital of Teshub. Quickly, Hoda slipped into tights and undershirt made of a stringy dwarfish fabric. She strapped a dagger to each of her ankles and forearms, then strapped a leather mesh around her shoulders and waist; it hid another four blades. She then slid into a warm, flowing dress, thick wool socks, and a pair of tall, black leather boots with concealed openings that gave easy access to the daggers tied to her ankles. Mercilessly, she worked the comb through her thick, curly hair until she managed to subdue it into a tight ponytail. She rolled up the sleeping mats and dropped them into a large trunk. Using a soft short-bristled brush that her friend Foosh had given her, she swept the elmia, a thin, hand-woven wool rug sporting the design of a balance scale with two gold pans, set between four peacocks.
“The scale symbolizes Mitani’s longevity,” Foosh had explained. “The four peacocks represent elegance, beauty, power, and distinction. When they see this rug, the Gordionist inspectors will know you to be a rich merchant from Mitani, worthy to conduct business in the City of Cupolas.”
Carefully, Hoda flipped the elmia over and brushed its underside. Using a firmer brush, she cleaned the thick gray carpet beneath before straightening the elmia back into place. She moved two comfortable chairs to the middle of the living room and placed a small, round, mosaic-covered table beside each chair. Then she rolled up two rugs that hung from the walls, exposing two steel-mesh-covered windows. Grabbing a pitcher, she watered the greeneries hanging in pots from the tent’s main pole. Lastly, she dusted the small dining table and four chairs set in the opposite corner. Even though the tent was well insulated, dust still managed to sneak in, and like stubborn flies, it would settle on the table, waiting for her to chase it away.
“There-ah,” Hoda said in a near-perfect Mitanian accent, “the room-ah is worthy-ah of couple-ah from-ah the noble-ah city of Torpan-ah.”
She crossed over to the small kitchen where she stoked the fire inside a small, movable iron oven—a marvelous little device Master Kwadil had received from the Kingdom of Ophir. The oven’s side remained cool, and since its chimney rose four feet above the tent’s peak through a sealed opening, it had kept the tent free from smoke and fumes.
“It ah-would been nice-ah if Master Kwadil-ah had servants-ah to cook-ah for us, but no-ah. No servants for Mister Rastoop and his beautiful wife-ah Linlin-ah.”
The young woman shook her head, Linlin, I am Linlin Rastoop, wife of the wheat grower Jermo Rastoop from the southern city of Torpan. She cracked four eggs into a frying pan. We have joined the famed caravan of Master Kwadil to trade with the wealthy city of Gordion. On top of the eggs, Hoda placed four thin slabs of dried meat, slices of cucumber, celery, mushrooms, and zucchini, then added dashes of salt, curcuma, and pepper. There are thousands upon thousands of people out there who lead normal lives, and I, I have become a trained member of the Black Robes, the covert organization the Temple would love to destroy.
In a small iron pan, she toasted a handful of pistachios drizzled with butter. She served the omelet on two separate plates and topped them with the toasted pistachios.
She was about to carry the plates to the main room when two hands held her by the waist and she felt her husband’s mustache on her neck.
“You’re late,” Karadon whispered.
“You’re early,” she replied, closing her eyes. “Morning of Goodness.”
“I love you.”
“I know. Hungry?”
He grunted.
Involuntarily, Hoda smiled. Syreen had been right, Karadon preferred grunts to words; a very useful trait that had served them well during all the rescue missions of these past four years.
They ate in silence. All around them the vast camp of Master Kwadil was stirring. Hoda could hear the clanging of the smithy and the braying of the donkeys ready to leave their enclosure. Muffled voices reached them; voices of merchants and porters, slaves and dwarfs, all getting ready for another profitable day of trading.
“What day are we today?” asked Karadon.
“It is 4 Tébêt 1191,” answered Hoda.
Karadon looked up from his plate and chuckled. “Do you always give the full date when asked for the day of the week?”
“What do you mean?” Hoda was visibly confused. “You asked me for the date and I … Oh,” she said smiling. “You’re right. It’s Nabû today.”
“Thanks. Hey, how does that nursery rhyme go again?”
Hoda smiled. Her husband remembered minute details of the massacres perpetrated by the High Riders in so many villages, but not the simple days-of-the-week rhyme that everyone learned as children.
“All right, Karadon,” Hoda said playfully, “let’s try this one more time. Remember now that this lullaby was sung by Shalimar the Poet to his favorite daughter, Lulu. Here how it goes:
Snûnû, Lulu, lost his bright big head.
Lulu, Nabû, fell from his big bed.
Their sister, Ishtar, Lulu, showed up instead.
Next appeared, Lulu, Shamash, bright and red.
Then came, Lulu, scary Utu the dread.
Lulu, children ran to be by Mutu fed.
Lastly comes late and tired, Lulu, Hused.”
Hoda’s voice was soft and melodious. Whenever she chose to sing, Karadon held his breath, as if he were seeing her through a magical window—the Hoda he had known so briefly before the destruction of Baher-Ghafé. He knew not to prompt her or to ask her to sing, for she would immediately refuse. He wished there were a female-singing zakiir who could sing songs with Hoda’s voice.
“Well, that makes no sense,” he said gruffly to hide his emotions. “How is that song supposed to help you remember these names?”
“Don’t you see it, silly? Seven days of the week for seven verses and each day appears in its matching position: Snûnû is the first day, so it’s the first word of the first verse. Nabû is the second day, so it’s the second word of the second verse. That’s why we teach this song to the children.”
Karadon raised his hands to the heavens the way he had seen Jabbar do. “Why are we even discussing this?” he asked.
“Because you asked me the day of the week.”
“Ah yes, that’s true. I did ask you for the day of the week. So this means we have been camping here for two weeks, yes?”
“Yes.”
“Two weeks,” h
e mused. “This is not a simple mission.”
“If we spend another week, I will turn into a Mitanian turnip,” added Hoda. Karadon eyed her, smirking. “Don’t you dare say one word, Mister Rastoop, or I will let everyone know how a carpet merchant bamboozled you. You bought sixteen carpets for our living room.”
“They were not for our living room. I told you, it was an investment. Besides,” protested Karadon, “I returned them.”
Hoda shook her head. “No, Master Kwadil returned them. You grunted painfully.”
“Well, I mean …” Karadon grunted.
“You couldn’t ask Master Kwadil to speak with his friend, the carpet merchant. Instead, you sent me.”
An uncomfortable grunt answered her. “Yes, I know. You have a way with words, and me, well …” He broke out in laughter.
He had an easy laugh, and she loved it. He gulped his food down and pushed his plate away. With a satisfied sigh, he leaned back, sipped his tea, and clicked his tongue. How he managed to drink it so hot escaped her, just as his desire to grow a mustache eluded her. She preferred him clean-shaven, but he wanted that silly thing stuck on his face like a haphazard child’s scribble. He thought it made him look older, but she knew he would remain forever young, and the sea would always dance in the blue of his eyes.
Seeing her gaze at him tenderly, he blushed. “What?” he blurted while trying to straighten his mustache.
“You didn’t comb your hair; you have a balding spot on the right side.”
“Really?” he asked, feeling his head. “I didn’t notice.”
“And the hair on the back of your head is flat against your skull. You look like a wet chicken.”
He frowned and grunted. “Anything else?” he asked, sipping his tea. She looked at him with a critical eye. She knew he was wearing the same specialized weapon-concealing undergarments below his black trousers and white buttoned shirt. His shiny boots reached only to his ankles. “What is it with men,” she said smiling. “You shine your boots but you can’t take care of your hair.”
He shrugged his shoulders and grunted.
“I see,” she replied. Over the past six years she had learned to interpret his grunts. “So your boots are more important than your head?”
“They’re steel-reinforced, ready to deliver a good kick when needed. I can’t kick with my head, now, can I?”
Once more, she did not understand how he could think that, but she did not mind it. Karadon declaimed obscure sayings like oracles in the Temple of Baalbek. Whereas the oracles’ utterances had filled her with a sense of impending doom, her husband’s sayings reassured her. He got up, picked up the dishes and went to the kitchen where he scrubbed them thoroughly before cleaning the pans. She stood at the door and watched him. He sometimes looked and sounded foolish, but she had seen him in action and knew how efficient and deadly he could be. He had taught her how to throw a dagger, then showed her how to throw four daggers in a deadly sequence. He had forced her to repeat the same movement hundreds of times until she could reach behind her back, pull a dagger and hit a target in the blink of an eye.
“Anything new?”
“Oh, yes. This tasty omelet, your talk of turnips and carpets, and this business of my hair made me forget what I wanted to tell you. Our contact was at the meeting point this morning. He came.”
“Finally,” she said with a sigh of relief. “Two weeks playing a wealthy Mitanian tourist is enough. I can’t take this rich food much longer.”
Karadon smiled. Patience was not Hoda’s greatest virtue. Even though she had learned to handle the daggers well and could fight like the best of men, she was still impulsive and angry. He knew she had been crying, but he had learned to keep his peace. His wife had not forgiven herself for the loss of her brother.
A week after the High Riders had destroyed Baher-Ghafé, they had borrowed a boat from some fishermen in Byblos, and went looking for Ahiram. After a frenzied search, they had found Hoda’s empty vessel in a secluded bay, but there was no sign of her brother. She did not speak for days and refused to eat or sleep until Ashod told her about the Black Robe’s mission.
“We save lives, Hoda, that’s what we do,” Ashod explained. “We have spies who warn us of the Temple’s movement and we try to save the lives of their next victims before they strike. The Temple’s attack on your village came without warning. If Syreen and Karadon had not noticed your brother’s medallion, you would be dead. This camp is filled with survivors who have lost loved ones, but who chose to save lives. You can join us, or drift into despair, and despair will lead you to a dark place where the Kerta priests will find you. Choose well.”
Hoda agreed to help the Black Robes, but she refused outright to speak with her mother, which pained Karadon. He understood that it was easier for Hoda to accuse her mother than to confront her own sense of failure. Firsthand experience had taught him that the traumatic loss of loved ones and the horrendous destruction of one’s own home led many to guilt and a deep sense of shame. His village had been razed when he was fourteen, and he was thrown into a similar inner turmoil. He knew Hoda had to walk the bitter path to its appointed end. He wished he could take her pain away, for he knew he could handle whatever the Temple would throw his way.
A few weeks later, Hoda asked him to train her, and for the next four years, she practiced relentlessly until she could throw a blade like the best of them. Meanwhile, Hayat began welcoming refugees, and Jabbar hid his sorrow behind the anvil of an old blacksmith. Hoda rarely saw them.
Then, one day, Ashod had joined Karadon and Hoda for lunch. He came unannounced and they did not know what to make of it.“Suppose,” he had asked them, “you had to choose between saving your family and letting everyone else in your village die. What would you do?”
“I’d save my family,” Karadon had replied without hesitation. “That would be my duty.”
Hoda nodded.
“Very well,” Ashod replied. “Suppose a family member could, with one gaze, one focused gaze, kill everyone in your village. Let’s say it was your sister who, through no fault of her own, killed anyone she gazed upon. Worse yet, suppose that by merely looking at a mountain, she could destroy it—”
“A mountain?” asked Hoda.
“A mountain and everything on it. And by gazing at the sea, she would replace it with a deep, dark and empty abyss. If your sister could not help herself from using this terrible power, what would you do? Would you let her live, or would you kill her?”
“That’s a terrible choice,” said Hoda softly. “I don’t know what I’d do.”
“Is that what the Temple of Baal is doing?” asked Karadon.
“Precisely. The Temple has every reason to believe that a person with such a power exists, or will exist.” His eyes were locked on Hoda. “They call him the Seer of Power, and they believe he will wield this destructive power that will free the Sheituun, the Lords of Darkness, and make him their puppet. He would become the dark overlord to do their bidding in a world as dark as the Pit itself.”
Hoda stared at him wide-eyed, refusing to consider the eventuality.
“Is this true?” Karadon asked, bewildered.
Ashod nodded. “You understand now why the Temple feels compelled to do what they do? They have no choice. They do not know who the Seer is. So when they detect the Seer’s presence somewhere, they must exterminate everyone in order to protect us.”
“Is that why they destroyed Baher-Ghafé?” asked Hoda. “Because of the medallion?”
“Perhaps,” replied Ashod. “It’s hard to say.”
“But what if they’re wrong? What if someone faked that sign in order to destroy the village?”
“The Temple is not so easily tricked.”
“But they could have spared the women and the aged and only killed the young boys,” said Karadon.
“The Seer may be male or female, and no one knows when they will come into power.”
“I see,” said Hoda.
“The
High Riders are so well trained that if the Temple ordered them to kill their own kin, they would do it. This is the Temple’s mission. This is what it stands for,” said Ashod.
Karadon and Hoda both felt dizzy and weak. “But if this is so,” Hoda had whispered, “why are we fighting them?”
Ashod came close, laid a gentle hand on her shoulder, and looked so intently at her that she was frightened by the fiery light in the old man’s eyes. “Because, my dear one, although the Temple is sincere, I believe they are sincerely wrong. We keep up our fight until the Temple realizes they were wrong all along.”
“Why are you telling us all this?” asked Karadon. “This is so unlike you, Ashod.”
Ashod looked at him and grinned. “Indeed, so unlike me. I am telling you this in case, just in case, your brother happens to be this Seer. Your love for him will help keep him safe from the Pit.”
“You think Ahiram is alive?” asked Hoda. She held back tears.
Ashod looked at her with his inscrutable eyes. “Time will only tell. In the meanwhile, you must cultivate love and gratitude. Your brother will need you alive and strong. He will need all the help you can give him. You might yet have the occasion to prove the Temple wrong, Hoda. Remember this, child, and do not speak of it to anyone.”
The conversation had a profound effect on Hoda. Her appreciation for Karadon had grown into a deep sense of gratitude. “Another day to save another life,” he would say, and she would smile. Whether the Temple was right or wrong, together, they would help someone enjoy one more day under the heavens, and perhaps that was enough. They had found a rhythm, a common cause to fight for, a vessel on the high waves of the world to carry them forward.
Two years ago, after an exhausting day of training, they had taken a stroll under cherry trees in full bloom.
“They are so beautiful,” Hoda had said.
“I know, and each flower reminds me of you.” Karadon stopped and turned to her. “I loved cherries before I met you, but since the first day I saw you, I knew I would love the trees in full bloom even more than the cherries. Marry me, Hoda.”
Wrath of the Urkuun (Epic of Ahiram Book 2) Page 22